SMC Infrastructure is apologizing to all motorists affected by traffic jams along portions of the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX), Skyway, NAIAx and STAR Tollway this morning, resulting from a momentary network outage in our electronic toll collection system.
Their IT teams traced the source of the downtime to a cut in their fiber optic network. They are still determining the root cause of the damage, but there are indications that a major vehicular accident may have contributed to the situation.
To help ease traffic congestion, SMC Infrastructure deployed additional manpower to provide support for motorists.
They have also opened affected toll plazas and waived toll fees. All in all, this covers around 84,000 vehicles that passed through the expressways from 6 AM to 2 PM on Thursday, November 17.
This includes motorists whose ETC accounts were deducted upon entry; they will receive electronic refunds in their Autosweep accounts. While the system was restored around 9 AM, SMC Infrastructure decided to keep barriers at toll plazas up, to enable all affected motorists to pass through for free.
Why do we regularly suffer from public utility company outages whether this be water, electricity, communications, and now toll services? As a nation, we should show our outrage more otherwise, these companies will think it is ok not be okay! Though kudos to SMC for proactively refunding service not rendered.
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